Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Internet Providers Move to Shape Broadband Push

The US has slipped from 4th place to 15th since 2001. How do you feel about government money being used to bring us back up speed? And do you think that it should just be for unserviced areas or also to upgrade existing networks?

Internet Providers Move to Shape Broadband Push

President-elect Barack Obama's call to improve the nation's broadband infrastructure has cable and phone company lobbyists maneuvering to get a leg up.

Lawmakers in Congress want a plan that will create jobs over the next two to three years while also tackling the longer-term goal of improving the availability and quality of high-speed Web access in the U.S. The U.S. has slipped to 15th from fourth place since 2001 in broadband penetration, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Advocates say broadband deployment is critical to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

Among the issues are what speed Congress should define as broadband and whether government money should be funneled only to areas that have no broadband access, or if it should also subsidize upgrades to existing networks. (more....)

13 comments:

I like the internet alot, but it is a luxury not a necessity. If our military needs something in order to serve and protect I'm for paying for some improvements. But I am pretty sure they have what they need. So I would say unless we have a surplus instead of a deficit, that is something I would put on hold.

The median download speed for the US is 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). That is 30 times slower than Japan’s median speed, which sits at 63 mbps. Did everyone hear that? The US is 30 times slower than Japan!

But the US isn’t just sitting behind Japan. In fact, America comes in at number 15 in terms of broadband rollout, and is behind countries like Canada (7.6 mbps), France (17 mbps), Finland (21 mbps) and South Korea (49 mbps) in terms of speed. The most telling statistic is the fact that US users pay the same amount for their broadband access as do those in Japan.

"We need high-speed Internet for our homes, schools, hospitals, and workplaces... Speed defines what is possible on the Internet. It determines whether we will have the 21st century networks we need to create the jobs of the future, develop our economy, and support innovations in tele-medicine, education, public safety, and public services to improve our lives and communities."

If we want to continue to have free and open markets and ask our citizens and industries to compete on the global stage, we don't have a choice. We must fix this or we will not be able to compete. Period.

One other thought, I wonder if everyone would share what their home download speed is. Mine is 6 megabits per second because I have AT&T's extreme DSL service and because I live in metro Atlanta. I have the fastest connection offered here and I'm still 10.5 times slower than the average home in Japan. Ann (this blogger) has a 512kb or half a megabits per second connection at home. Ann you are 123 times slower than homes in Japan. What do you think about that?

Ann, I don't know enough about the technicalities of the subject to make an intelligent comment here, even after reading three articles today. I'll let Jim say the smart stuff.But I do know that my work, my kids' education, and much of my life now revolves around the web. I also know I've said for years that "knowledge is power". I don't see how people living in underserved rural areas today could possibly compete for jobs or in their education w/o viable broadband connections and yes, I think some gov't subsidy is warranted.

Hey Waynette I really do see where you are coming from. If we were just doing it to help us bloggers and YouTubers to be able to watch HD videos, or to play better games, I would agree that it would be a luxury we could live without. I just worry that other countries have already passed us by and even if we start today, it will be hard to ever catch up. Ann is actually the more knowledgeable person on this topic because of her work. We've heard people say not to worry about us losing our manufacturing base because the U.S. is going to be the leader in information technology in the 21st century. But we won't be for long unless we have the best information highway. Anyway, it's a very interesting topic that I'd love to know more about. Thanks for this post Ann. You got to think a little today!

If you want to see your actual download and upload speeds, you can run a speedtest. The results show up as kbps so to get it in megabytes, just add a decimal point three spaces over from the right. Mine shows a download speed of 6435 kbps so that's 6.4 megabytes per second.

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